Universal law...

“It's an universal law -- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” 

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

photograph via

STEM, Gender, and Stereotypes

"Women have been found to be under-represented in fields where it is believed that innate talent is the main requirement for success and where women are stereotyped as not possessing this talent."
UNESCO (2017:43)



Various reasons are considered when discussing gender inequalities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Self-selection bias is seen as the major reason for girls not considering STEM professions since they believe they would be incompatible with their gender. Girls encounter explicit and implicit STEM-related gender stereotypes throughout the socialisation process; two stereotypes prevail: Boys are better at maths and science and engineering careers are masculine domains. These stereotypes are internalised but even if not, having people around them who hold such beliefs can undermine the girls'confidence, performance, and intention to pursue a STEM career. Often, parents (particularly mothers) can reinforce negative stereotypes about girls in STEM and discourage their daughters. Similarly, (female) peers who see STEM subjects as inappropriate for women have a discouraging effect. Teachers play a crucial role, too. In one study, they were found to be "the only significant predictor of girls' interest and confidence in science". 
(UNESCO, 2017)

Related posting:
::: Women, Maths & Stereotype Threat: LINK

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- UNESCO (2017). Cracking the code: Girls' and Women's Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). LINK
- photograph of Iranian women before the Islamic Revolution by A. Abbas/Magnum Photos via

Schools and Religious Diversity: Why Teacher Professionalism Needs Diversity Awareness

Next week, the 2019 CESNUR Conference "Re-Enchanting the World: Spiritualities and Religions of the Third Millennium" will be held, taking place from 5 to 7 September at the Università di Torino.



I am very much looking forward to travelling with my Cinquecento, taking part and talking about "Schools and Religious Diversity: Why Teacher Professionalism Needs Diversity Awareness":

The rise of migration to Europe has brought ethnic and religious diversity, is reshaping the educational landscape and challenging policy makers. In populist rhetoric, religion is instrumentalised as a means of constructing a “Christian Occident” as an antithesis to immigrants and refugees mainly coming from Muslim-majority countries. Islam has more or less become Europe’s second religion, at the same time reason number one for discrimination and bullying at school. According to surveys, teachers feel ill prepared to meet the needs of students with a different religious background and helpless when confronted with islamophobia, antisemtitism, etc. Since schools play a key role in integration, supporting social changes, and building the future, it is high time university curricula and teachers‘ ongoing education were rethought.
In this paper, the field of tension is discussed between schools‘ task to educate in line with the majority’s culture and the inclusion of minorities, between stereotypes, challenges, problems and chances, between freedom to and from religion, as well as types of religious discrimination, perpetrators and victims, good practices, and latent variables hidden behind generalisations suggesting that it is not necessarily religion per se that is the problem.




photographs via and via and via

Social Segregation, Teachers, and Recruitment Gap

"It has long been recognised that schools serving disadvantaged communities are more likely to be staffed by teachers without qualified teacher status, with fewer years of experience and by non-specialist science and maths teachers. Inequality in access to suitably qualified, high quality teachers is likely to be an important contributor to the attainment gap that exists between students who come from disadvantaged families and those who do not."



According to a survey conducted among more than 7.000 primary and secondary teachers in the U.K., schools serving disadvantaged communities struggle finding qualified teachers, particularly in core subjects such as mathematics and sciences. Teachers believe that these schools involve harder work and require more skills while they prefer to teach pupils with fewer behavioural problems. However, 80% would consider a move to a school with recruitment difficulties if the conditions (pay, promotion, reduced timetable) were right (via and via).

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photograph by Henry Grant (1966) via, copyright by Henry Grant Collection and Museum of London

Pygmalion in the Classroom

In 1965, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson conducted an experiment in an elementary school to study the impact teacher expectation has on student performance. The researchers told teachers that certain children were "growth spurters" based on their results on the Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.
But. The test did not exist. The children, in fact, had been chosen at random. They did, however, nevertheless show greater intellectual growth than the control-group children after one year (12 IQ points versus 8 IQ points). Why?



Expectations serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. Teachers expecting greater intellectual development communicate these expectations with reactions, words, looks, postures, gestures; they encourage their students. Particularly younger children, i.e. first and second graders, show effects of teacher expectations (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1965). Seen from a different angle, this means that certain students are not encouraged and do not perform well due to the low expectations. This is particularly of interest when discussing the performance of children and their ethnicity, religion, gender, and socio-economic background.




-  Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L. (1965). Pygmalion in the Classroom. The Urban Review, 16-20, link
- photographs taken at Broadview Public School in 1959/60 via

Police, Geriatrics Training and the Ageing Population

"Although there is no shortage of literature focusing on strategies for policing different genders, races (sic), and other groups, older populations have not attracted the same attention."
Sever & Youdin (n.d.:2)

“I learned how the elderly feel after going through the simulations. Before I hadn't put myself in their shoes.” a police officer cited in Brown et al., 2017

Police officers in San Francisco were given a lecture on ageing-related health conditions followed by experiantial trainings on how it can feel to be old through simulations (e.g. walking with a cane that was too short). The brief training "increased police officers' self-reported knowledge and skills", gave them empathy, increased patience, awareness and understanding of ageing-related challenges, which is of enormous importance as our population is lucky enough to be ageing. Police are often first responders to incidents with ageing-related problems and need to be able to deal with older adults who "represent an extremely medically vulnerable group" - no matter if older arrestees or older crime victims.

When police lack knowledge about aging‐related health, they risk causing unintended harms to older adults, such as using excessive force to respond to disruptive behavior related to dementia. Yet previous research shows that police receive little training in aging‐related health and have knowledge gaps that may limit their ability to assess and triage older adults. For example, officers engage with older adults who have sensory, cognitive, and functional impairments, but many report challenges in identifying and responding to these conditions. Similarly, officers perform welfare checks for at‐risk isolated older adults but report lacking knowledge about which community resources are available to help.

The training developed for police officers in San Francisco was incorporated into the police department's Crisis Intervention Training, a training that includes lectures about "special populations" (Brown et al, 2017).

One officer stated that the training will help him treat all individuals “as if they were my parents,” highlighting an important outcome of the training: to build empathy. (via)

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- Brown, R., Ahalt, C., Rivera, J., Stijacic Cenzer, I., Wilhelm, A. & Williams, B. A. (2017). Good Cop, Better Cop: Evaluation of a Geriatrics Training Program for Poice. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 65(8), online
- Sever, B. & Youdin, R. (n.d.). Police Knowledge of Older Populations: The Impact of Training, Experience, and Education, download
- photograph by the great Vivian Maier via

World Teacher's Day

World Teachers’ Day 2018 will mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognizes education as a key fundamental right and establishes an entitlement to free compulsory education, ensuring inclusive and equitable access for all children.



This year’s theme, “The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher,” has been chosen to remind the global community that the right to education cannot be achieved without the right to trained and qualified teachers. Even today, a continuing challenge worldwide is the shortage of teachers. There are an estimated 264 million children and youth still out of school globally. To reach the 2030 Education Goals of universal primary and secondary education, the world needs to recruit almost 69 million new teachers. This ‘teacher gap’ is more pronounced among vulnerable populations, such as girls, children with disabilities, refugee and migrant children, or poor children living in rural or remote areas.

Held annually on 5 October since 1994, World Teachers’ Day commemorates the anniversary of the signing of the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. It is co-convened in partnership with UNICEF, UNDP, the International Labour Organization, and Education International. (literally via)

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photograph via

Education After Auschwitz, by Theodor Adorno (1966)

The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again. Its priority before any other requirement is such that I believe I need not and should not justify it. I cannot understand why it has been given so little concern until now. To justify it would be monstrous in the face of the monstrosity that took place. Yet the fact that one is so barely conscious of this demand and the questions it raises shows that the monstrosity has not penetrated people’s minds deeply, itself a symptom of the continuing potential for its recurrence as far as peoples’ conscious and unconscious is concerned.



Every debate about the ideals of education is trivial and inconsequential compared to this single ideal: never again Auschwitz. It was the barbarism all education strives against. One speaks of the threat of a relapse into barbarism. But it is not a threat—Auschwitz was this relapse, and barbarism continues as long as the fundamental conditions that favored that relapse continue largely unchanged. That is the whole horror. The societal pressure still bears down, although the danger remains invisible nowadays. It drives people toward the unspeakable, which culminated on a world-historical scale in Auschwitz. Among the insights of Freud that truly extend even into culture and sociology, one of the most profound seems to me to be that civilization itself produces anti-civilization and increasingly reinforces it. (...)

A pattern that has been confirmed throughout the entire history of persecutions is that the fury against the weak chooses for its target especially those who are perceived as societally weak and at the same time—either rightly or wrongly—as happy. Sociologically, I would even venture to add that our society, while it integrates itself ever more, at the same time incubates tendencies toward disintegration. Lying just beneath the surface of an ordered, civilized life, these tendencies have progressed to an extreme degree. (...)

People who blindly slot themselves into the collective already make themselves into something like inert material, extinguish themselves as self-determined beings. With this comes the willingness to treat others as an amorphous mass. I called those who behave in this way “the manipulative character” in the Authoritarian Personality, indeed at a time when the diary of Höss or the recordings of Eichmann were not yet known. (...)

Walter Benjamin asked me once in Paris during his emigration, when I was still returning to Germany sporadically, whether there were really enough torturers back there to carry out the orders of the Nazis. There were enough. Nevertheless the question has its profound legitimacy. Benjamin sensed that the people who do it, as opposed to the bureaucratic desktop murderers and ideologues, operate contrary to their own immediate interests, are murderers of themselves while they murder others. I fear that the measures of even such an elaborate education will hardly hinder the renewed growth of desktop murderers. But that there are people who do it down below, indeed as servants, through which they perpetuate their own servitude and degrade themselves, that there are more Bogers and Kaduks: against this, however, education and enlightenment can still manage a little something.

Theodor Adorno

::: Via/Full text: LINK

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photograph via

Freedom Schools

In 1964, Freedom Schools were established aiming to offer a culturally relevant curriculum to Black students and to empower them. Students studied "race" relations, inequality, African American history and literature, critically studied what it meant to be a black US-American during the Civil Rigths Movement. Providing critical information meant that students could realise that education was the door to greater political freedom as it was also required for voting rights (Watson, n.d.).



In Mississippi, per capita expenditure of school boards was four times higher for white children than for black children.Teachers did not cover controversial topics as they would have lost their jobs. Additional schools were needed, schools in which questioning was the vital tool, Freedom Schools.
Freedom Schools were popular, twice as many students took part than expected. Classes were usually held in churches or outdoor. Not only did they enhance critical thinking, other subjects (e.g. foreign languages) were supposed to help students transition to higher education after completing high school (via).


Photograph: The Freedom Summer, volunteers arrive in Hattiesburg, MS, the "Mecca of the Freedom School world" (via)


Photograph: The July 4th, 1964 picnic at Vernon Dahmer's farm welcomed Freedom Summer volunteers to Hattiesburg, Mississippi.


Photograph: Vernon Dahmer (1908-1966), pictured wearing a hat, is the Hattiesburg activist who hosted the July 4th picnic. He was murdered two years after the Freedom Summer by members of the Ku Klux Klan.


Photograph: Freedom School Mississippi Project, 1964, a volunteer teaching science class to students, photo credit: Matt Herron


Photograph: Freedom School student Cynthia Perteet (left) and volunteer Beth More (right) in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer, 1964. More was a teacher in the Freedom School hosted by Mt. Zion Baptist Church.


Photograph: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee field secretary Sandy Leigh (New York City), director of the Hattiesburg project, lectures Freedom School students in the sanctuary of True Light Baptist Church.


Photograph: Volunteer William D. Jones (native of Birmingham, Alabama, and New York public school teacher) who taught in the Freedom School at True Light Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, leans on the stair rail of St. John United Methodist Church in Palmers Crossing talking with local child Tilton Sullivan.

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- Watson, M. (n.d.). Freedom Schools Then and Now: A Transformative Approach to Learning, 170-190, link
- photographs and their descriptions via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via

Going to school ... with a headscarf

A survey carried out in Austria in 2016 came to the conclusion that the most common type of discrimination at schools is islamophobia. 61.70% of the students who had experienced discrimination were Muslims followed by 31.91% who had experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity, 4.26% because of their gender, 2.13% because they were atheists.
More female (51.06%) than male (34.04%) students reported to have experienced discrimination. Of the Muslim students, 73% of the girls and 10% of the boys felt discrimated against and among the girls those wearing a headscarf (62%) were more affected than those without (38%).



While more female students are discriminated against, more male (55.32%) than female (31.91%) teachers act out their prejudice. The percentage of male teachers discriminating against female students is 66.67% compared to 18.52% of male teachers discriminating against male students.

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- Initiative für ein diskriminierungsfreies Bildungswesen (2016). Diskriminierung im österreichischen Bildungswesen. Bericht 2016
- photograph via

ADHD and the School System

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are a challenge to "manage" at school. In general, there is a lack of formal education and support to help and prepare teachers (e.g. Perold et al., 2010). Hence, teachers can feel stress and see it as an educational problem (via). The classroom, in fact, can be "one of the most difficult places for children with (...) ADHD" (Kos et al., 2006). Among some teachers, there is the tendency to get rid of these children by diagnosing special needs and sending them to special schools (via).



Educational reformer Friedrich Gedike (1754-1803) pointed out that school records were not primarily about academic performance but about behaviour, discipline, obedience, and attention. The characteristics of this school system (that do have survived) create an environment in which children with ADHD are perceived as particularly challenging. Outside school, their behaviour is not labelled as a problem - or at least not to such an extent (von Stechow, 2015). Psychosocial interventions can improve school performance (Tresco et al., 2010).

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- Kos, J.M., Richdale, A. L., & Hay, D. A. (2006). Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and their Teachers: A review of the literature. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 53(2), 147-160.
- Perold, M., Louw, C., & Kleynhans, S. (2010). Primary school teachers' knowledge and misperceptions of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). South African Journal of Education, 30, 457-473.
- von Stechow, E. (2015). Von Störern, Zerstreuten und ADHS-Kindern: Eine Analyse historischer Sichtweisen und Diskurse auf die Bedeutung von Ruhe und Aufmerksamkeit bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Kinkhardt.
- photograph via

The Sir Peter Ustinov Foundation

The Sir Peter Ustinov Foundation was founded by UNICEF goodwill ambassador Sir Peter Ustinov and his son in 1999. Its focus is to grant children access to education and an optimistic future "irrespective of their cultural, social, religious or financial background". Ustinov was convinced that education is the key to a better future, to a world with less poverty and fewer conflicts. He was also convinced that prejudices are the origin of all conflicts. The foundation actively looks after vulnerable children such as orphans, children with facial disfigurement and young trafficked prostitutes.



Currently, there are eight Peter Ustinov schools in Germany dedicated to living an open-mind culture and fighting prejudices. There is also the Ustinov College in Durham (where students are called Ustinovians) and the Ustinov Institute in Vienna, both support research on prejudices in order to eliminate them (via).

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images via (copyright by respective owner/s)

A School in Malindi

Every year, the Italian Embassy in Nairobi organises a concert by a renowned Italian musician. In 2012, the musician was Mario Biondi, Italy's Barry White. All proceeds went to "an Italian Cooperation education project for the construction of a primary school for the poorest children of the coastal city of Malindi in Kenya" (via and via).



Mario Biondi Sunday music link pack:

::: Yes You: LISTEN/WATCH
::: This Is What You Are: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Deep Space: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Live in concert, 2015: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Amarsi un po': LISTEN/WATCH (Original: Lucio Battisti)
::: What Have You Done to Me: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Shine On: LISTEN/WATCH



photograph via

Narrative images: The Lost Year

"A high school student being educated via television during the period that schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, were closed to avoid integration" (via). The photograph was taken by Thomas O'Halloran in September 1958 (via).



"'The Lost Year' refers to the 1958–59 school year in Little Rock (Pulaski County), when all the city’s high schools were closed in an effort to block desegregation. One year after Governor Faubus used state troops to thwart federal court mandates for desegregation by the Little Rock Nine at Central High School, in September 1958, he invoked newly passed state laws to forestall further desegregation and closed Little Rock’s four high schools: Central High, Hall High, Little Rock Technical High (a white school), and Horace Mann (a black school). A total of 3,665 students, both black and white, were denied a free public education for an entire year which, increased racial tensions and further divided the community into opposing camps.

(...) Perhaps the greatest consequences were the effects on displaced students and their families. Some of the educational alternatives that displaced students found were nearby public schools, in-state public schools where students lived with friends or relatives, out-of-state public and private schools, correspondence courses, parochial schooling, and early entrance into college. Nearby schools such as Jacksonville (Pulaski County) and Mabelvale (Pulaski County) for white students and Wrightsville (Pulaski County) for black students absorbed as many students as they could. Some students, as young as fifteen years old, moved in with relatives in public schools across all of Arkansas, and even out of state. The number of displaced white students was 2,915. Of those, thirty-five percent found public schools to attend in the state. Private schools in Little Rock took forty-four percent of the displaced white students. A total of ninety-three percent of white students found some form of alternative schooling. This was not the case for displaced black students. Among the 750 black students who were displaced, thirty-seven percent found public schools in Arkansas to attend. Some located parochial schooling, out-of-state public and private schooling, and some did enter college early or take correspondence courses. However, fifty percent of displaced black students found no schooling at all. The NAACP, through Roy Wilkins, stated that opening private high schools for displaced black students would defeat their intent to gain equal access for all students to public education. Some of the students from both races went to the military, some went to work, and some married early or simply dropped out. Interviews with many former students indicate lifelong consequences because of this denial of a free public education."

Via/More: The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture

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photograph via

Quoting Charlotte Brontë

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones."
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)



photograph (Paris, 1951) via

Born this day ... Lee Lorch

"Because he believed in the principles of decency and justice, and the equality of men under God, Lee Lorch and his family have been hounded through four states from the North to the South like refugees in displaced camps. And in the process of punishing Lee Lorch for his views, three proud institutions of learning have been made to grovel in the dust and bow the knee to bigotry."
Ethel Payne



Lee Lorch (1915-2014) was a mathematician and civil rights activist. He obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University in Cincinnati in 1941.
After World War II, Lorch started teaching at the City College of New York "but was soon fired because of his civil rights work on behalf of African-Americans." Shortly after taking up his job at the City College of New York, he moved into Stuyvesant Town, a private residential development on the east side of Manhattan, owned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance. Blacks were barred from living there as, according to the president of Metropolitan Life, "negroes and whites do not mix" and apart from that "it would be to the detriment of the city, too, because it would depress all surrounding property." Lee Lorch had all the credentials to move in, i.e., a "steady job, college, teacher and all that. And, not black." The lawsuit against Metropolitan that had been brought in by several people and organisations in 1947 had failed in the state courts as the insurance company was free to select tenants based on absurd criteria. Lorch was aware of the discrimination other faced and became a vice-chair of the tenants' committe that was founded to eliminate the housing discrimination. He also invited a black family (art student Hardine and Raphael Hendrix and their 6-year-old son Hardine Jr.) to live in his own flat where he was living with his wife (a longtime activist herself) and his young daughter.

"The Stuyvesant Town tenants committee, with 1,800 members, was made up of the families of veterans who believed that after fighting a war for justice overseas, they could not ignore injustice at home. "The courage and sharpshooting of a Negro machine gunner saved my life with a dozen other white G.I.'s (...). Can any one of us say he can't be my neighbor? I can't." Surveys of residents conducted by the tenants committee showed that two-thirds of Stuyvesant Town's 25,000 tenants opposed MetLife's exclusionary policy."  (Fox, 2010)

"I had become very aware of racism through the war; not just anti-Semitism, but the way the American army treated black soldiers. On the troop transport overseas, it was always the black company on board that had to clean the ship and do the dirty work, and I felt very uncomfortable with that." Lee Lorch, 2007

Metropolitan Life refused to accept the Lorches' rent check and started searching for ways to get them out. But Lorch had decided not to go quietly, that he would resist and that they had to throw him out by force.

"Nineteen of the families decided to fight to keep their apartments. (...) The city marshal ordered the targeted tenants to be out of their apartments by 9 o'clock on the morning of Jan. 17, 1952, and hired a moving company to drag their furniture onto the street. In response, the families barricaded their doors. They sent their children to stay with relatives and passed baskets of food from window to window with ropes."  (Fox, 2010)

In 1950, Metropolitan Life admitted three token black families but did not change its tenant housing policy. In 1959, only 47 black tenants lived in Stuyvesant Town.

Lorch did not pay the price for his activism only once. In 1949, he was forced to leave City College since he was "unquestionably a fine scholar and a promising teacher" but "an irritant and a potential troublemaker". The N.A.A.C.P. protested the decision ... but Lorch had to leave.
Lorch started teaching at Pennsylvania State University. When he arrived at the campus, he was immediately taken to the university's acting president whom he had to explain what had happened at Stuyvesant Town as the university had received phone calls from wealthy alumni who wanted to know why Lorch had been hired. He was denied reappointment because he had accommodated a black family which was "extreme, illegal and immoral, and damaging to the public relations of the college." Students, the American Association of University Professors, the American Mathematical Society, The New York Times, The Daily Worker, and Albert Einstein protested ... but Lorch had to leave.
In 1950, Lorch became one of two white professors at historically black Fisk University. He continued his activism, tried to enroll his daughter in an all-black school, refused to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee ... in 1955, Lorch had to leave Fisk University.
When the Little Rock Nine enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957, Lee Lorch - at that time an official with the Arkansas chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. and chair of the Mathematics Department at Philander Smith College in Little Rock - was working behind the scenes and accompanying the students to school and tutoring them. He was told his best contribution would be to terminate his affiliation with the Little Rock Branch of the N.A.A.C.P. Whites abused him for his desegregation activism, blacks kept their distance because of the "un-American" stance he was accused of. After threats and the school's funding at risk, Lorch resigned.
By 1959 it was official that no US-American college would have him, Lorch was blacklisted. The family moved to Canada where he taught at the University of Alberta and then at York University until he retired.
In 2010, Lee Lorch was asked if he would do anything differently. His reply: "More and better of the same."

"It's hard to imagine now, but there was no civil rights legislation back then. You could be fired without explanation. But how could you do anything else, in all good conscience?" Lee Lorch

Decades later, several colleges - among them two that had fired him - and associations gave Lee Lorch honorary degrees and other awards (via and via).

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- Fox, A. (2010). Battle in Black and White. In Rosenblum, C. (ed.) More New York Stories. The Best of the City Section of The New York Times, New York & London: New York University Press, 246-253
- photographs via and via

Inclusive Pedagogy & Bell Curve Thinking

Inclusive pedagogy is a contentious concept as there is no agreement that all children can be educated together and where there is agreement there is still a discussion on how this can be done (Florian, 2015). As countries and cultures have different concepts, there is some confusion about the use and meaning of inclusion in educational settings. Different definitions have resulted in different practices (Makoelle, 2014). There is the widespread perception (or rather fear) that the inclusion of pupils with difficulties in learning will hold back the progress of pupils without difficulties in learning. Inclusive education, however, results in benefits for all learners (Spratt & Florian, 2013).



Inclusive pedagogy rejects so-called ability labelling, it does not limit the expectations of teachers and pupils and by focusing on the perceived "potential" reproduce social inequalities.
Labelling children as those having "special needs" means that teachers differentiate work based on their perception of ability which again places "a ceiling on the learning opportunities of those thought to be less able". Disrupting these practices and replacing them with participatory approaches to both teaching and learning is what educational (and social) inclusion is about.
Inclusion is not passive, it is not "being done to" certain groups but a dynamic process that involves all children (Spratt & Florian, 2013).

"The notion of inclusive pedagogy is not a call for a return to a model of whole class teaching where equality is notionally addressed by providing identical experiences for all. Instead it advocates an approach whereby the teacher provides a range of options which are available to everybody. Human diversity is seen within the model of inclusive pedagogy as a strength, rather than a problem, as children work together, sharing ideas and learning from their interactions with each other. The inclusive pedagogical approach fosters an open-ended view of each child’s potential to learn."
Spratt & Florian (2013)

Bell curve thinking means that positions at the centre of a normal distribution are seen as ideal while those outside are regarded as marginalised learners who require something additional, different or "special".

"Because schools are organised by grouping pupils according to commonly agreed categories, and the utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, what is ordinarily provided will meet the needs of most learners, while some may require something ‘additional’ to or ‘different’ from that which is ordinarily available. A bell curve model of distribution, which assumes ‘that most phenomena occur around a middle point while a few occur at either high or low extreme ends’ (Fendler and Muzaffar, 2008, p 63) underpins many educational practices and is widely used as an organisational principle. Sorting students by ability is one example of how this model operates; the use of norm-referenced tests is another. Both of these practices are part of the pathway by which judgements about students’ learning capacity are determined and by which some students become eligible for additional support. As a structural feature of the school system, these sorting practices often set the points at which individual students’ educational needs are defined as ‘additional’ or ‘special’. Consequently the idea that some students will need something ‘different from’ or ‘additional to’ that which is generally available to others of similar age is taken for granted. In other words it has become normalised in educational thinking and is accepted without question. Indeed it guides the definition of additional support in many countries."
(Florian, 2015)

Having additional or special needs is being assigned membership to a group and starting to believe that one has the attributes of the group. Often, it also implies that teachers lower their expectations about what the student can achieve (Florian, 2015).



Once a child is labelled, the label is likely to stay throughout the school years. Having special needs means being different, can create stigma and low self-esteem (via). Inclusive pedagogy does not provide something different or additional but "seeks to extend what is ordinarily available to everybody" (via).



- Florian, L. (2015). Inclusive Pedagogy: A transformative approach to individual differences but can it help reduce educational inequalities? Scottish Educational Review, 47(1), 5-14
- Makoelle, T. M. (2014). Pedagogy of Inclusion: A Quest for Inclusive Teaching and Learning. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(20), 1259-1267.
- Spratt, J. & Florian, L. (2013). Applying the principles of inclusive pedagogy in initial teacher education: from university based course to classroom action. Revista de Investigación en Education, 11(3), 133-140.
- images via and via and via and via and via

Quoting Erich Fromm

"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"
Erich Fromm



photograph of Erich Seligmann Fromm (1900-1980) via

Sesame Street and Education for Refugee Children

Sesame Workshop (Sesame Street's educational nonprofit) and the International Rescue Committee (a global humanitarian aid organisation) have a new partnership aiming to develop and distribute educational resources and programmes that are designed with refugee children in mind. Using mobile devices, radio, TV and printed materials, educational content can reach the children who live in displaced or resettled communities



"The partnership is aimed at the children who make up half of the record 60 million people currently displaced around the world, specifically the one-third of that population under the age of eight. In addition to a lack of education, these children also often deal with toxic stress and trauma." (via)

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photograph via

Presidential Elections, Austria, Voting Behaviour and Education

Yesterday the presidential elections took place in Austria, with two candidates who could not be more different from each other: a) an "exclusion candidate" from a party whose main political content communicated in campaigns is patriotism, nationalism, asylym seekers (a "big" problem; after all an equivalent to about 1% of the Austrian population claimed asylum in Austria last year, via), xenophobia and Islam bashing, and b) an "inclusion candidate", an intellectual who stands for inclusion and modern social policies.



The presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament, Jean-Claude Juncker and Martin Schulz expressed concern over a victory of the far-right candidate (via) while Le Pen, Wilders, Petry and Salvini congratulated him (via and via).

The results?
About half of the people voted for one candidate, about half of the people voted for the other candidate. The final result will be decided by this afternoon when hundred thousands of postal ballots are counted.

The demographics?
Education:
- 81% of people with a university degree voted for the "inclusion candidate", 19% of them for the "exclusion candidate"
- 73% of people with "Matura" (i.e. 12 years of school education with school leaving exams that entitle you to study at university) voted for the "inclusion candidate", 27% for the "exclusion candidate"
- 67% of people with minimum compulsory schooling and apprenticeship voted for the "exclusion candidate", 33% of them for the "inclusion candidate"
Blue vs white:
- 86% of blue-collar workers voted for the "exclusion candidate", 14% of them for the "inclusion candidate"
Urban vs rural:
- Cities clearly voted for the "inclusion candidate", 61.99% of people living in Graz and 61.16 of people living in Vienna voted for the "inclusion candidate" ... just to mention two cities
Gender: 
- 60% of women voted for the "inclusion candidate", 60% of men for the "exclusion candidate"

(Statistics via and via)



photograph (Miss Nell Sanders Aspero, Mrs. Anthony A. Aspero, Chairman of Voters Service and practicing attorney, Mrs. Robert W. Shafer, President of the Memphis League and Bobby Shafer Jr, all of Memphis with Mrs. Asperos' Oldsmobile and "Bossy." August 1959) via, Vote Baby Vote via